Shadow Passes
by Tyndall Blue
Summary: At the rise of the Nazi-regime in Germany, Edward is branded an undesirable. Left with no choice but flight, Alfons follows him into hiding. Warnings for implied death. alt!Roy/Ed


Shadow Passes

"Like a shipwreck we die going into ourselves,  
as though we were drowning inside our hearts,  
as though we lived falling out of the skin into the soul."  
_Nothing But Death_, Pablo Neruda

* * *

He'd never meant to live this long; but as surely as the bombs fell on London every day, and the sun crept through the smoke, his heart kept on beating and he would wake to the dream. The dream had become more nightmare than ever before since they had fled Germany. In the night, clutching a bundle of warm bread and soft cheese pressed upon them by Hughes and Gracia, they had stowed away hidden in a wagon. Then, more than ever, was was aware of how his arm couldn't feel the warmth, and how Heiderich struggled to stifle his cough amidst the silence of the orchards they sometimes hid in. Their living was a constant state of falling, and he was bracing himself for their inevitable impact.

But that shock, that sudden crush of reality never came. Not even in the weight of warm, heavy arms ushering them bodies, sickened by stolen bitter apples, into a dark row house. They were bathed and fed soft cheese which resisted their throats. In their hidden attic room, the darkness was lit by the warm fires and spotlights of London. When Alfons slept, soft rattles echoed in the black uncertainty of space. Sleep was just another type of falling.

* * *

They had grown thin and were growing thinner, as if they paid a toll to death just to wake every muted morning. Edward was afraid he could cut himself on the sharp cup of Alfons' clavicles. Al made his own protest to the painful points of Ed's hips. On night, the soldiers had come and had retreated to a crawl space barely tall enough for their prone, hungry bodies.

"Not a sound!" The woman had warned them. "Or you will shake the dust from the rafters!" Ed lay atop the other boy's shaking body, in attempt to both still and shield him from further dust. Ed curled his hands over the pale lips and bowed his head to the hot one beneath him There was no room even for hushes or whispers. As boots pounded below, Al's entire being shook with the desire, the need to cough and clawed at his benevolent captor. Ed just shut his eyes and prayed to Morpheus that this was just another horrible dream. Against him, Alfons shook so violently that Ed worried he would blow apart like the rockets he had loved and lost. In his mind, he saw Al's head and limbs blast away to freedom, bloodless with little sputtering fuses.

* * *

One day, they took Alfons away. They said to a doctor. Despite promises the woman of the house had not been up with news or food for at least three days. It is hard to tell without the newspapers. Ed preoccupies himself in the weak morning hours trying to tighten the prosthetic harness on his shrinking body. Without Alfons' gravity to hold him he worries he will break apart. That decades of fear, worry, and desperation fueled by guilt would precisely divy what little of him was left, before the emptiness swallowed him. Or even worse, that he would find he could not die, and that this dream was hell.

* * *

He didn't even care how long it'd been when a new face passed up through the attic floor. The strange man was tall and broad shouldered despite tell-tale thinness, and gave Ed only a glance before settling to a corner, knees to his chest. The air in the room was still as always, not even dust rises in wan motes of light.

But Edward had made impact, sudden and sharp as a rock to the face. This was landfall, this was the awful and real descent from dream to wakefulness. Ignoring his company, he curled up tighter and sobbed, barely functional fingers curling tight in the tangled hair of his bowed head. The stranger didn't even stir to look.

* * *

It was nighttime. The months had taught him that night is safe for everything but sleeping. The man moved, becoming a lurching shadow drawing nearer. Ed already knew those strides and the warmth at his side.

"Sprichst du Deutsch?" The stranger whispered, voice rough and catching slightly from neglect.

"Ja," he answered, lifting his head so he can take in the silhouette. Fear and desire bristled at this very real example of the "uncanny valley." The face before him seemed to waver between foreign and familiar. Its instability gave him vertigo.

"Wie heißt du?" _What's your name?_

"Eduard. Eduard Heiderich," he stumbled and swallowed his loss.

"Rickert Rouss," was whispered back. Somewhere in the folds of filthy clothing their fingers me. Tentative at first, but then turned to a mutual grasp of need. As if they could pour their story of suffering out of their palms and into the other. "_I feel as if, I have known you before_," Rickert hesitated. Ed admires the roughness of his palms. A blacksmith's hands.

"_Even then, you never really knew me_."

* * *

The moon rose and respected their silence, whispering light over the tiny room. Illuminated like that, Ed felt ever more like a ghost. He haunted the family, living in their walls and taking the blame for odd noises and missing socks. Rickert offered no resistance as Ed took his palm again and traces it. Backlit, he could easily be Roy, the gauntness and stubble lost in the forgiving shadows.

"_I am the only one left_," he offered softly, freeing a hand to loosen a lock of tangled golden hair. Unable to laugh, Ed sighed, sharp and bitter, lifting both hands to cup the face a man nearly ten years forgotten, and kissed him. It was delicate and fragile, broken upon an exhale.

"_Then we are perfect. I always was._"


End file.
